Uplifting readings for religious women decade 1990s

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss how the religious readings, specifically the biographies, functioned as a recruitment strategy of religious women to the Catholic Church and also as a pedagogical way of upbringing novices and nuns in convents. The book that has been analyzed is "The mystery of the cloisters" (O mistério das Clausuras) by Alfonso de Santa Cruz (1995), in which the author selects letters he had requested to the nuns from all over Brazil, asking them to highlight the reason for their entry into religious life. We understand the letters of these religious women as the writing of themselves, that is to say, when writing about themselves the nuns intended to spread an image of themselves as well as of the religious life. In addition, we analyze the stories from a gender perspective, that is, we understand that the representation about female religious life is anchored in the roles that these women can assume in the institution, as opposed to the roles that men assume. Therefore, we use as theoretical reference the following authors: Bourdieu, Scott, Certeau, Durkheim, Eliade.